Eyes will roll: Unlocking The Truth
Photograph: Alex Sturrock for the Guardian/the Guardian

In the summer of 2013, footage appeared on YouTube of three African-American kids from Brooklyn playing unnervingly accomplished metal music in Times Square. Less than 18 months later, Unlocking The Truth became the youngest band to sign to Sony, in a deal worth $1.8m.

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The unlikely rise of Malcolm Brickhouse (guitar, vocals), Jarad Dawkins (drums), and Alec Atkins (bass) is what documentary maker Luke Meyer (New World Order, King Kelly) fixes his lens on in Breaking a Monster – an apparent hat-tip to Some Kind of Monster, Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger’s study of Metallica.

Unlike Metallica, Unlocking the Truth aren’t in the midst of fraught internal wrangling or petty disputes, and definitely don’t shout “FUUCCCKKK” in each others’ faces when they have a falling out. Meyer instead finds the funnies and charm in their nascent rock stardom and, more intriguingly, with the people who surround them.

There’s Alan Sacks, the veteran manager who brought the world the Jonas Brothers and created the US TV hit Welcome Back Kotter. He’s arguably the star of the whole thing, coming across as how you’d imagine Jeffrey Lebowski would if he were to manage a group. Every time he’s on screen he comes out with a laconic pearl, such as “I’m going to go meditate. See you guys in five” or “I really don’t dig this, man”, when Brickhouse is eating cookies and getting crumbs all over his couch.

The band’s parents also have a starring role, juggling the group’s growing pains with the neuroses that would naturally emerge if your 12-year-old son was about to sign a multi-million dollar recording contract.

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Finally, there’s the band themselves. Meyer treats them with the same sensitivity and respect Shane Meadows gave the Stone Roses when he directed Made of Stone, but Meyer does a better job or carving out what makes each member intriguing.

Atkins is the type of 13-year-old who creates existential expositions based on Grand Theft Auto. Brickhouse is the malcontent lead singer whose source of anguish isn’t women or drugs but not being able to skateboard or drink Coca-Cola whenever he wants. Finally there’s Dawkins, a melancholy, lovelorn realist who delivers a disarming deadpan opinion on just about everything.

Meyers success comes from understanding that the interesting thing about a rock band made up of 12-year-olds is their unique approach to rock’n’roll situations we’ve all seen a thousand times. When in meetings about their contract they play Flappy Birds; when they get to a hotel room they have a pillow fight rather than chucking a TV out of a window; and if something isn’t going the way they want it to, they turn to their mums.

It’s a charming and engaging mix – the antithesis of Metallica’s ego overload, and just as watchable.